Criminals, Partners, or Enablers? Making sense of lawyers’ and accountants’ involvement in the Mafia’s Economic Infiltration in Italy

• In Event: WG Organized Crime and Criminal Networks Panel 2. Organized crime infiltration in the legal economy

Abstract

Criminal organizations rely on external actors—especially professionals—to infiltrate the legal economy. Yet many questions remain about how professionals become involved in organized crime. Their participation is often conceptualized as a “gray area” in Italian literature or a “middleground” in international scholarship, but the empirical data we have are sparse and inconsistent. This leaves important issues unresolved: What opportunities for contact emerge between professionals and mafia members in this sphere of collusion? How do professionals help mafia groups acquire human and social capital? And how does their role change based on the extent of mafia infiltration in a given region?

To address these questions, this study systematically examines cases of the ’Ndrangheta’s economic infiltration across Italy using qualitative methods, including content analysis and ideal-type analysis. Preliminary results suggest a profit-driven, economically oriented logic in Northern Italy—where accountants often play a key role—and a more socially embedded approach focused on territorial control in Southern Italy. These differences give rise to markedly different functions and roles for professionals, influencing how they come into contact with mafia members, the nature of their exchanges, the activities they undertake, and the extent of their involvement in decision-making.

Author

• Matteo Anastasio, Transcrime – Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore